The recent results on the linear breathing mode of the excitation spectrum of a quantum dot obtained by McDonald et. al [Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 256801 (2013)] are extended to the nonlinear regime. To accomplish this and analyze the results the response of five different models of two interacting electrons in a quantum dot to an external short lived radial excitation that is strong enough to excite the system well beyond the linear response regime is compared. The models considered describe the Coulomb interaction between the electrons in different ways ranging from mean-field approaches to configuration interaction (CI) models, where the two-electron Hamiltonian is diagonalized in a large truncated Fock space. The radially symmetric excitation is selected in order to severely put to test the different approaches to describe the interaction and correlations of an electron system in a nonequilibrium state. As can be expected for the case of only two electrons none of the mean-field models can in full details reproduce the results obtained by the CI model. Nonetheless, some linear and nonlinear characteristics are reproduced reasonably well. All the models show activation of an increasing number of collective modes as the strength of the excitation is increased. By varying slightly the confinement potential of the dot it was observed how sensitive the properties of the excitation spectrum are to the Coulomb interaction and its correlation effects. In order to approach closer the question of nonlinearity one of the mean-field models has been solved directly in a nonlinear fashion without resorting to iterations.